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honour … and, yes, I have invited the press along. I know it’s shaming, but there we are.
    Other weekend excitements: the Mill View Primary School May Fayre, the Chester Rugby Club Beer Festival (I’ve had to sponsor a barrel – £80! – and I hate the taste of beer), the Chester Festival of Transport and the Sponsored Walk for the Hospice … and it seems I could face another year of this before polling day. The Prime Minister has ‘let it be known’ that he is prepared to wait until next year before calling the election to reduce the pressure on Norman Lamont for immediate interest rate cuts. Something needs to give. The recession is worsening, not easing, and judging from the doors I’m knocking on the punters are blaming us.
    And even our friends don’t like us. Yesterday, doing a walkabout in Boughton, one of our elderly activists sidled up to me and said, ‘May I have a word?’
    ‘Of course.’ He must be in his seventies, small, stocky, cloth-cap, bent, red nose with a drip at the tip, the crooked man on the crooked gate.
    ‘I don’t think you’re going to hold the seat, I’m sorry to say.’ He looked
delighted
to be saying it.
    ‘Oh,’ I murmured, as cheerily as I could, ‘Why not?’ He drew in a long breath. ‘Any particular reason?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, shaking his head.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘It’s your handshake. It just isn’t firm enough.’ He put out his hand and I stupidly put out mine and he gripped my hand so hard I wanted to scream.
    ‘That’s what you need,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind my telling you, do you?’
SATURDAY 1 JUNE 1991
    ‘Britain remains sceptical about single currency, says Lamont.’ Seems quite a good ideato me – and inevitable. But what do I know? I know that Saethryd has come to Chester and I’m feeling guilty because I’m taking her to the Chester Regatta and Flower Show and there’s a photo call and I’m making sure she’s in it because the word is that my Labour opponent’s marriage is in a rocky state and we can’t expect too many happy family snaps during
his
campaign.
THURSDAY 6 JUNE 1991
    The birthday lunch for Prince Philip was a complete success. It was Ladies Only (apart from HRH) so I sat in a cupboard in a corner and watched the proceedings through a crack in the door. Michèle was perfect and Joanna [Lumley] was a dream – completely over the top and absolutely right. I allowed myself to attend the drinks beforehand and HRH was genuinely amused by the women-only idea. I told him Jane Asher had done a special birthday cake.
    ‘Didn’t she used to go out with Paul McCartney?’
    ‘Yes, but I don’t think she likes to be reminded of that.’
    ‘Pity. He’s good news.’
    ‘She’s good news.’
    ‘Yes, but Paul McCartney’s quite special.’
    I was convinced the first thing he’d say to Jane was ‘Didn’t you use to go out with Paul McCartney’ but he didn’t. When irritated (or sometimes, I suspect, just for the hell of it), he can be perverse. His office get you to provide reams of speech notes which are
never
used. I was convinced he wouldn’t use the script provided for the moment when he had to ‘Challenge Anneka’ to build the playground at Birmingham Children’s Hospital within the week – but, apart from calling her ‘A-knee-cur’ he was spot-on. 88
SATURDAY 8 JUNE 1991
    It’s our eighteenth wedding anniversary and for a special treat I take my wife to the City of Chester Conservative Association Annual Salmon Supper at Eaton Hall – courtesy of Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, both of whom are on parade, which is jolly decent of them. If I were the richest in the land, is this what I would be doing with my Saturday night? In truth, the event isn’t so much at Eaton Hall itself asin the garage at Eaton Hall. We huddle together for warmth as we dine alfresco in a cobbled yard bordered by garages and stables and we are very grateful to be adjacent to such grand surroundings despite the wind and